Texting while driving needs to take national prominence

September 04, 2009

The urge to text while driving apparently strikes widely, affecting everyone from excessively social teens to BlackBerry-obsessed business people to the District of Columbia's multitasking mayor. Wherever it hits, it can be dangerous. According to a study by Car and Driver magazine, reaction time while texting is often twice as long as while legally intoxicated. Still, only 17 states and the District of Columbia have passed legislation to discourage the risky behavior - and a couple of those states have banned texting only for drivers under 21 years old. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has called for a summit to address the issues known as driving while distracted. The hope is to find some consensus among experts on how to make drivers as aware of these dangers as they have become with regard to drunken driving. The most straightforward solution would be to use federal highway funds to encourage states to adopt bans on texting while driving, modeled on the seatbelt law. Though the ban might not be consistently enforceable, it would help make the unsafe practice socially taboo. - The Washington Post